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Author: SheaHowell

December 18th, 2018

In the Face of FearA Call from James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership

We have seen the face of fear and fascism. It is tear gas shot at barefoot children in diapers. We cannot look away. We cannot be distracted by the din of disinformation and denial.

Before this moment we knew this president was capable of putting children in cages. We knew he would call people names and whip up nationalistic hatreds. We knew he would endorse white supremacists as good people, condone the murder and dismemberment of a journalists, refuse to limit right wing violence, withdraw protections for people who are transgender, use language to foster hatred, ridicule people with disabilities, embrace torture and the use of force, attack women, people of color, and anyone who was critical of his policies, deny science, violate basic standards of decency, and demonstrate a complete disregard for truth. Now we know he will tear gas barefoot children.

We know all of this about Donald Trump. We know this is the kind of person he is. This is the kind of country he is creating. We also know that some of us embrace him. We see the depth of their fear. Most of those who support him are white. Most of them are men. All of them are disconnected from any moral center.

Now, the only question is where do the rest of us stand? What kind of country do we want? What kind of people are we?

The violence on the Southern border of the U.S. presents a moment of decision for all of us. Just as the unleashing of sticks and dogs on peaceful demonstrators challenged the conscious of America a half century ago, we are again called to respond.

Some of us will stand with Trump. But the rest of us cannot condone him with silence. Many of us know that people are fleeing conditions in their homelands created by U.S. policies that have disrupted generations. The U.S. have intervened to destroy democratic impulses, distorted economic development for our own interests, and pursued deportation polices that have eroded the social bonds of communities, contributing to corruption and violent drug cultures. In U.S. efforts to guarantee access to the resources and wealth of people around the globe, we are destroying the homes and cultures of people everywhere. The people coming to the borders of the US are fleeing conditions we created to feed our own greed.

It is not enough to open our borders or change our immigration policies. We need to open our hearts and minds to change the reality that our willingness to take the wealth of the world is destroying us and risking the future of our planet. We need to support one another to not only sustain our outrage at the terror our government is wielding on a daily basis, but in finding new ways to live together that are sustainable and just. As we work to transform ourselves and our culture, we must begin by renouncing the violence being done in our name.

We at the Boggs Center denounce this president and his actions. We open our hearts to those who seek refuge and peace, knowing that much of their pain is caused by the actions of our nation.

We call upon all people of good will to publicly and forcefully object to the inhuman immigration policies of our government.

We call upon all faith-based organizations to declare Sanctuary for all immigrants.

We call upon all organizations to issue public statements welcoming immigrants and denouncing the use of force to prevent their safe passage to this land.

We call upon all labor unions to offer support and welcoming assistance to immigrants.

We call upon all police, border patrol agents, and military personnel to refuse to comply with orders that harm those who seek nothing but peace and safe harbor.

We call upon members of the media to portray accurately and fully the violence being committed in our name.

We call upon all teachers, parents and community leaders to hold conversations about immigration, the US role in global violence, and the kind of country we wish to become.

We call upon individuals to face this brutality and find ways to extend love, compassion and care in our everyday lives.

At every moment in our often bloody, shameful history there have been people who resisted. People resisted the taking of indigenous lands, the enslavement of people from Africa, the use of laws to turn people into property, and the limitations of full citizenship for women, people of color, workers, immigrants and youth. People are resisting today.

We call upon people to reflect on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King more than 50 years ago when he said, “Now we must resist this barbarism.” America, he said, “Can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So, it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.”

He said that “Somehow this madness must cease” for it “is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.
In his speech calling for the end of the Vietnam war King offered a new way of thinking about who we could become as a people. We encourage people to consider the wisdom he offers for us as we face a time of choice.

Share his wisdom with family and friends. Dr. King says to us:

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

He called on us to look beyond our narrow self -interest and consider “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”

“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”

King understood that “These are revolutionary times…all over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before.”

Dr. King called for “A genuine revolution of values “that begins with the understanding that “our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.”

If we cannot find new ways to act in Love, King warned, “We shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Dr. King concluded his speech on breaking his own silence on the war in Vietnam on that long-ago April night:
“Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message — of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history….”

If Trump and his supporters fear barefoot children, how much more must they fear the sounds of our united voices, calling forth a compassionate, just and joy filled future? The choice is ours.

For more information – www.boggscenter.org

This is from one of our readers in Ohio, written in response to last week’s, Thinking for Ourselves column.

Shea,

I just read your most recent blog, “Beyond Lame Ducks” and while I agree that placing calls to the very electeds who put forth the bills that strip people of direct democracy is not going to stop it – it is comparable to slaves asking the plantation owners to free them – I have to disagree with your implication that this is somehow all because of Republicans.

We are fighting a war in Ohio for Community Rights and Rights of Nature and I can tell you that the Democrats (as in the Democratic party, so maybe not every individual democratic elected) are just as opposed to direct democracy by the people as most Republicans are. It is a false assumption to think that we have 2 distinct political parties in this country. They are really one elite party representing the best interests of the elite 1% minority.

In Ohio as more communities bring forth laws by initiative – direct democracy, we have seen the D’s vote against us right along with the R’s. We have also witnessed a few R judges actually write dissenting opinions in our favor. So, to keep people believing that if we could only somehow get more D’s in office, all will be better is false. All it does is keep us spinning in the two party hamster wheel and keeps people fragmented, which is what they want.

I wanted to share this with you as I see it over and over again as I talk to people across Ohio….Trump is the problem and Obama was wonderful. That is very far from the truth. They both work(ed) to promote the best interests of the corporate state (1% elite minority) above the people’s and nature’s. It is what that money to get them in office requires of them. We need to realize that change comes from the grassroots and that our guiding documents state “all power is inherent in the people”, NOT “all power is inherent in the electeds”. We need to start asserting that power to propose and pass laws directly that benefit the best interests of the people and nature and eventually the electeds will be forced to follow our lead. – Tish O’Dell – Ohio Organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

Represent your love for the Motor City wherever you go by rocking the new “Detroit Diplomat” t-shirts. “Detroit Diplomat” is a call for community self-determination and a responsibility to represent our interdependence and collective autonomy wherever we go.

Living for ChangeGrace Lee Boggs More Questions than AnswersMany of us will be thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King this week as we mark the 50 years since his murder and the 51st since his call for a radical revolution of values.
To help us think about this moment, we are sharing some of the reflections of Grace Lee Boggs, written more than a decade ago while we were exploring the questions of what we learned about the creation of Beloved Communities since the death of Dr. King. – Boggs BoardFirst written somewhere between 2004 and 2008…In the last 60 years I have had the privilege of participating in most of the great humanizing movements of the second half of the last century – labor, civil rights, black power, women’s, Asian American, environmental justice, antiwar. Each was a tremendously transformative experience for me, expanding my understanding of what it means to be an American and a human being, and challenging me to keep deepening my thinking about how to bring about radical social change.
However, I cannot recall any previous period when the issues were so basic, so interconnected and so demanding of everyone living in this country, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, gender, age or national origin. At this point in the continuing evolution of our country and of the human race, we urgently need to stop thinking of ourselves as victims and to recognize that we must each become a part of the solution because we are each a part of the problem.
How are we going to make our livings in an age when Hi-Tech and the export of jobs overseas have brought us to the point where the number of workers needed to produce goods and services is constantly diminishing? Where will we get the imagination, the courage and the determination to reconceptualize the meaning and purpose of Work in a society that is becoming increasingly jobless?
What is going to happen to cities like Detroit that were once the arsenal of democracy? Now that they’ve been abandoned by industry, are we just going to throw them away? Or can we rebuild, redefine and respirit them as models of 21st Century self-reliant, sustainable multicultural communities? Who is going to begin this new story?
How are we going to redefine Education so that 30-50% of inner city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that large numbers will end up in prison? Is it enough to call for “Education, not Incarceration”? Or does our topdown educational system, created a hundred years ago to prepare an immigrant population for factory work, bear a large part of the responsibility for the escalation in incarceration?
How are we going to build a 21st century America in which people of all races and ethnicities live together in harmony, and Euro-Americans in particular embrace their new role as one among many minorities constituting the new multi-ethnic majority?
What is going to motivate us to start caring for our biosphere instead of using our mastery of technology to increase the volume and speed at which we are making our planet uninhabitable for other species and eventually for ourselves?
And, especially since 9/11, how are we to achieve reconciliation with the two-thirds of the world that increasingly resents our economic, military and cultural domination? Can we accept their anger as a challenge rather than a threat? Out of our new vulnerability can we recognize that our safety now depends on our loving and caring for the peoples of the world as we love and care for our own families? Or can we conceive of security only in terms of the Patriot Act and exercising our formidable military power?
When the chickens come home to roost for our invasion of Iraq, as they are already doing, where will we get the courage and the imagination to win by losing? What will help us recognize that we have brought on our defeats by our own arrogance, our own irresponsibility and our own unwillingness, as individuals and as a nation, to engage in seeking radical solutions to the growing inequality between the nations of the North and those of the South? Can we create a new paradigm of our selfhood and our nationhood? Or are we so locked into nationalism, racism and determinism that we will be driven to seek scapegoats for our frustrations and failures – as the Germans did after World War I, thus aiding and abetting the onset of Hitler and the Holocaust? We live at a very dangerous time because these questions are no longer abstractions. Our lives, the lives of our children and future generations, and even the survival of the planet depend on our willingness to transform ourselves into active planetary and global citizens who, as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual society.”
The time is already very late and we have a long way to go to meet these challenges. Over the decades of economic expansion that began with the so-called American Century after World War II, tens of millions of Americans have become increasingly self-centered and materialistic, more concerned with our possessions and individual careers than with the state of our neighborhoods, cities, country and planet , closing our eyes and hearts to the many forms of violence that have been exploding in our inner cities and in powder kegs all over the rest of the world – both because the problems have seemed so insurmountable and because just struggling for our own survival has consumed so much of our time and energy.
At the same time the various identity struggles, while remediating to some degree the great wrongs that have been done to workers, African Americans, Native Americans and other people of color, women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, and while helping to humanize our society overall, have also had a shadow side in the sense that they have encouraged us to think of ourselves more as determined than as self-determining, more as victims of “isms” ( racism, sexism, capitalism) than as human beings who have the power of choice and who for our own survival must assume individual and collective responsibility for creating a new nation that is loved rather than feared and that does not have to bribe and bully other nations to win support.
These are the times that try our souls. Each of us needs to undergo a tremendous philosophical and spiritual transformation. Each of us needs to be awakened to a personal and compassionate recognition of the inseparable interconnection between our minds, hearts, and bodies, between our physical and psychical well-being, and between our selves and all the other selves in our country and in the world. Each of us needs to stop being a passive observer of the suffering that we know is going on in the world and start identifying with the sufferers. Each of us needs to make a leap that is both practical and philosophical, beyond determinism to self-determination. Each of us has to be true to and enhance our own humanity by embracing and practicing the conviction that as human beings we have Free Will; that despite the powers and principalities that are bent on objectifying and commodifying us and all our human relationships, the interlocking crises of our time require that we exercise the power within us to make principled choices in our ongoing daily and political lives, choices that will eventually although not inevitably (there are no guarantees), make a difference.
How are we going to bring about these transformations? Politics as usual, debate and argument, even voting, are no longer sufficient. Our system of representative democracy, which was created by a great revolution, no longer engages the hearts and minds of the great majority of Americans. Vast numbers of people no longer bother to go to the polls, either because they don’t care what happens to the country or the world, or because they don’t believe that voting will make a difference on the profound and inter- connected issues that really matter. Even. organizing or joining massive protests against disastrous policies and demands for new policies fall short. They may demonstrate that we are on the right side politically but they are not transformative enough. They do not change the cultural images, the symbols , that play such a pivotal role in molding us into who we are.
As the labor movement was developing in the pre-World War II years, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath transformed the way that Americans viewed themselves in relationship to faceless bankers and heartless landowners. In the 1970s and 1980s Judy Chicago’ s Dinner Party and Birth Project re-imagined the vagina, transforming it from a private space and site of oppression into a public space of beauty and spiritual as well as physical creation and liberation. In this period we urgently need artists to create new images of our selfhood and nationhood, images that will liberate us from our preoccupation with constantly expanding production and consumption and empower us to create another America that will be viewed by the world as a beacon rather than as a danger.

“When you talk to author and activist adrienne maree brown, you feel everything is going to be all right. You’re inspired by her hope, belief, and commitment just enough to muster your own. This must have to do with the way she sees possibility for change absolutely everywhere, which came about through her many roles. Brown is also a poet, social justice facilitator, science fiction scholar who is co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, and a doula.” KEEP READING

revolutionary, a man committed to changing what he believed needed change.

And, Ron Scott was a man of rich faith rooted in the Christian tradition. Ron was unique. He had

the wisdom to set aside theological dogma and advocate for peace in communities with a spirit of

ecumenism and inclusiveness embracing all faith traditions. Even if there seemingly were no faith

traditions in a situation he encountered, he was able to intuit the “tradition” at hand. He would effortlessly sense the dynamics of the moment and elegantly craft his response to the crisis. The “tradition”, very often, was that of the streets

that so many live with and in.

His talent to de-escalate a situation most certainly saved lives when people, hurt and desperate

to react in a moment of utter pain, were drawn to his words of peace and logic. Ron’s soothing,

yet piercing, logic was critical in advocating for generations of individuals engaged in what he

called the “War on Mack”. Ron knew that Detroit’s most crucial challenge was to teach people to

de-escalate volatile situations within the community before calling law enforcement. This was

the foundation for Ron’s work to establish Peace Zones for Life.

I have imagined Ron’s transition into the spiritual realm and have taken comfort in believing that

his life work would gain eternal recognition from the great leaders in the afterlife.

Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work “The

Hero With a Thousand Faces”, describes a hero as “someone who has given his or her life to

something bigger than oneself.” Campbell taught that myths represent the stories of the hero’s

journey that transcend all cultures. He describes the hero’s quest: “You leave the world that

you’re in and go to into a death or a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was

missing in your consciousness in the world you formally inhabited. Then comes the problem

either of staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to

hold onto it as you move back into your social world again. That’s not an easy thing to do.” Ron

took on this hero’s quest selflessly, knowing, all too well, the costs. His decision to walk a hero’s

path was not one he would have described as heroic: he walked with humility.

Ghandi’s favorite Hindu devotional song was “Vaishnava Jana To”, a

15th century Gujarati hymn he included in his daily prayer. In it, a

vaishnava is described as someone who “feels the pain of others, helps

those who are in misery, but never lets ego or conceit enter their mind.”

Ron was a vaishnava in this sense. He was especially adept at

embracing the pain of mothers and fathers who had lost children,

whatever the situation.

Buddhists describe a bodhisattva as “an enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes

nirvana in order to save others.” Ron was a bodhisattva whose heart ached with compassion.

Ron was a hero because he had the strength to blend what he knew about faith, philosophy,

politics, media, human nature and suffering and hone a message that encouraged people to be

the best they could be. He challenged all of us to think about what we “bring to the table” and he

challenged all leaders to ask the question, “Who is at the table and who needs to be at the

table.”

Ron’s commitment was 24/7. When a tragedy happened, Ron was often the first one called.

This weighed heavy on a soul so committed to his work. But Ron never said, “No. I’m too tired.”

In Memory of Ron Scott, Spiritual WarriorJames and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership

Lifelong community activist Ron Scott died on Sunday, November 29, 2015 after a difficult battle with cancer. We mourn his passing and will greatly miss his voice and insights.

Ron was a board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. He first met Grace and James Boggs when he was 16 years old and exploring the ideas of Black Power and Community Control. A founding member of the Detroit Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Ron remained a comrade and friend of the Boggs’ for the rest of their lives. Since the early 1970s he worked with members of the Boggs Center in organizing Detroiters For Dignity, We Pros, SOSAD, and Detroit Summer.

A gifted television personality, his love of young people lead him to Project BAIT, where he helped develop a generation of young people in video production. He was an independent film-maker, writer, speaker, radio host, and organizer. He was a media pioneer, hosting Detroit Black Journal, often bringing the voices of radical thinkers and activists to larger audiences.

Over the last 20 years, Ron has been a primary spokesmen and intellectual force for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality. Through the Coalition he was a tireless advocate for peace in our communities.

Richard Feldman of the Boggs Center said, “Ron was honored that he came from a family of teachers, ministers and working folks with many varied ideas. He was loved by Diane Reeder, dearly respected by Congressman John Conyers, and by hundreds of young people whose lives he protected and whose dignity he fought for. He reminded us to respect elders who were engaged in the “struggle” and to understand that we all build on the work of earlier generations. Ron had enormous faith in people and believed “everyone could change”.

Myrtle Thompson-Curtis of the Boggs Center and Feedom Freedom Growers said, “I am truly glad to have worked along side Ron Scott. He was always a teacher and healer.”

“Ron was a spiritual warrior who clearly acknowledged the media wars and the war between moving forward and being “stuck” in old ideas of revolution. He believed every institution in our country needs to change. Changing ourselves and becoming more human, human beings, thinking dialectically, not biologically were essential to his efforts of uniting the long haul with the urgency of now,” Richard Feldman said.

Ron always asked, “Who is not at the table? Which youth are we talking about and trying to reach?” He believed in community as the foundation of safety and argued that the only purpose of the police is to serve the people. He never doubted that it was our responsibility to create Peace Makers and turn War Zones into Peace Zones.”

Over the last several months, while dealing with illness, Ron felt a responsibility to speak to the young activists emerging in the Black Lives Matters Movements. His recently finished a book, Guide to Ending Police Brutality published in the fall of this year. It is available at the BC website.

We will miss Ron’s leadership and passion, his commitment, and continual probing of what it means to be more human.

Ron was committed to his beliefs, his journey towards transformation, and his desire to contribute to young people, our city, our region, and our nation. He truly believed, “A Community That excludes even One of its members is No Community at All.”

We join his family, friends, and many comrades in acknowledging his life of commitment to creating a more just and peaceful world.

Our mission is to nurture the transformational leadership capacities of individuals and organizations committed to creating productive, sustainable, ecologically responsible, and just communities. Through local, national and international networks of activists, artists and intellectuals we foster new ways of living, being and thinking to face the challenges of the 21st century.

Living for Change NewsMLK Day

Thinking for Ourselves

Breaking SilenceShea Howell

This year there is a poignant urgency to the celebrations of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Across the country people are gathering to celebrate, honor, and remember the movement and vision that called our country to find its best traditions and just promise. Everyone is mindful that these gatherings are happening in the shadow of the inauguration of a man who is the antithesis of all Dr. King represented.

King would be 88 years old now, an age where many are still offering wisdom and counsel. Yet because of the kind of wisdom and counsel he was compelled to give us, he was killed. That wisdom is best captured in his

speech given at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, “A Time to Break the Silence.” That was 50 years ago. It was his most searing indictment of the war in Vietnam, his deepest call to creating beloved communities.

King said, “When I speak of love I am not speaking about some sentimental and weak response…Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality…Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. We must find new ways to speak and act for peace and justice…If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

The “dark and shameful corridors” are pressing in on us. And so Dr. King’s call to action is fiercely urgent. He asked us to “rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.”

It is this call that is animating renewed energy in our country. Thousands of people are gathering in Washington D.C. and communities across this land to publicly declare opposition to the policies and practices that threaten to poison our souls.

Dr. King said, “It is the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”

In this spirit

Movement for Black Lives has called for a Pledge of Resistance and a week of non violent, direct action stating, “The Movement for Black Lives continued in the tradition of civil disobedience and direct action to reclaim the narrative of the Civil Rights Movement from corporate America, Hollywood, and others bent on sanitizing Black history rooted in radical tradition. #ReclaimMLK is a call to connect our contemporary movements, and to eschew respectability in order to embrace the radical courage of our people in the present. Today, as many ask us to “wait and see” and “respect” politicians aimed at hurting us, that original call is even more urgent.”

The

National Council of Elders is calling for people to move with this courage to organize public readings of “A Time to Break the Silence” and ask hard questions about what it means for us today.

In this last year of life, Dr. King was becoming increasingly aware of the need for revolution. He said, “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values…When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Our country is at a turning point. Dr. King

reminds us, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable…Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” Now is the time to give new and renewed voice to determine our future together.

WHERE: Cass Corridor Commons, 4605 Cass Avenue, Detroit, MI, USA, a city with a rich history of activism and organizing.

WHAT: A chance to LEARN, SHARE, QUESTION, and CONNECT through interactive techniques developed by Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, and other people working to fight oppression and create justice. Learn more about Freire and Boal and their work at ptoweb.org.

WHO: YOU. Students, teachers, scholars, artists, activists, organizers. People of all ages, places, identities, experiences. If you want to build dialogue and make a more just world, you are invited, you are welcomed, and you are NEEDED.

WHY: The 22 Annual Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference will be held in Detroit, MI commemorating the 50th Anniversary of 1967 Detroit Rebellion and Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence – in which he called for a radical revolution in values in the struggle against the evil triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism—and looking toward the future. Read more here.

Detroit Visionary ResistersTawana Honeycomb Petty

As the country experiences the turmoil that is American politics, many people in Detroit are showing visionary resistance to the status quo.

In 1964, Dr. King said, “Now, this economic problem is getting more serious because of many forces alive in our world and in our nation. For many years, Negroes were denied adequate educational opportunities. For many years, Negroes were even denied apprenticeship training. And so, the forces of labor and industry so often discriminated against Negroes. And this meant that the Negro ended up being limited, by and large, to unskilled and semi-skilled labor. Now, because of the forces of automation and cybernation, these are the jobs that are now passing away. And so, the Negro wakes up in a city like Detroit, Michigan, and discovers that he is 28 percent of the population and about 72 percent of the unemployed. Now, in order to grapple with that problem, our federal government will have to develop massive retraining programs, massive public works programs, so that automation can be a blessing, as it must be to our society, and not a curse.

Then the other thing when we think of this economic problem, we must think of the fact that there is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a segment in that society which feels that it has no stake in the society, and nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a number of people who see life as little more than a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. They end up with despair because they have no jobs, because they can’t educate their children, because they can’t live in a nice home, because they can’t have adequate health facilities.”

As we look around at the conditions that plague our communities some 53 years after Dr. King gave this speech, we now know that our dignity and our humanity lies within the hands of those willing to struggle towards Dr. King’s later call for a radical revolution of values.

We now know that we must create while we resist.

“I don’t know what the next American revolution is going to be like, but we might be able to imagine it if your imagination were rich enough.” – Grace Lee Boggs